By Thai Newsroom Reporters
PRIME MINISTER Anutin Charnvirakul has categorically dismissed speculation that he might probably see a couple of his predecessors, namely de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra and his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra, albeit in hush-hush fashion somewhere in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur between tomorrow (July 9) and the following Friday.
Scheduled to pay an official visit to Malaysia on July 9 and July 10, Anutin denied the unconfirmed news reports that he might probably hold a hush-hush, private meeting with the Shinawatras in Kuala Lumpur where both of his predecessors are reportedly staying. Paetongtarn has recently posted online to confirm her father and herself were travelling to the Malaysian capital for undisclosed reasons.
The prime minister remarked that his official trip to Malaysia was primarily meant for him to meet with his Malaysian counterpart Anwar Ibrahim and to hold talks about Thailand’s exported fishery products and other bilateral trade topics plus a formal opening of a Thai-Malaysian border checkpoint in Sadao district of Songkhla and that he will most certainly be too preoccupied with such official tasks to spare time to see anyone else during his two-day visit to the southern neighbouring country.
Anutin said he had personally sent Thaksin congratulations for the latter’s release from prison after he had been literally put behind bars for an eight-month period until he was released on parole and finally granted royal pardon alongside thousands of other inmates last May.
Thaksin’s neo-conservative party is currently part of the ultra-conservative Bhumjaithai-led coalition government with his nephew, namely Yodchanan Wongsawat, assuming the seat of higher education, science, research & innovation minister, among others.
The de facto Pheu Thai boss was ousted as elected prime minister in the 2006 coup, prompting him to become a globetrotter and stay in self-exile overseas for 17 years until he returned home in 2023. Thaksin had allegedly taken legal loopholes to literally keep himself from jail to otherwise serve an eight-year jail term which had been curtailed under royal pardon to only one year and to find himself in a privileged ward at Police Hospital under a thinly-veiled disguise of a critical patient for a six-month period. Finally, he was returned to serve a one-year sentence in jail on charges of misconduct perpetrated during his previous premiership over the last couple of decades.
Paetongtarn was deprived of her elected premiership by last year’s Constitutional Court ruling on charges of severely breaching the politician’s code of ethics by unduly making a leaked, private conversation on the cellphone with Cambodian leader Hun Sen about the chronic Thai-Cambodian border conflict during which she spontaneously called a Thai army commander “one of those on the other side.”
Following the court’s ouster of Thaksin’s daughter as head of government, Anutin, who concurrently acted as Bhumjaithai leader, had risen to elected premiership for a few months until he dissolved the House of Representatives to call a general election last Feb. which saw his ultra-conservative party, surreptitiously steered by de facto Bhumjaithai boss Newin Chidchob, score a landslide victory over the neo-conservative Pheu Thai and become core of the current coalition government of which Thaksin’s camp are the second largest partner.
CAPTIONS:
Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, right in above image and left in Front Page image, and former prime minister/de facto Pheu Thai boss Thaksin Shinawatra. Above photo – Amarin TV, Front Page photo – PPTVHD36
Insert: Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul and former prime minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra. Photo – MNG Online
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